Common Vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) are very ordinary looking compared with other bats. However, they can only rely on blood as their only food source. Its length is only approximately seven cm in length but has a 20 cm wing span and a full grown adult weighs around 28- 30 grams. The Common Vampire Bat’s body is covered with grizzled brown fur with the most significant characteristics being its large black wings embedded with finger bones and six sharp fore- incisors.
The bionomial name of the Common Vampire Bat is Desmodus rotundus. Desmodusmeans any various tropical American bats in the family which usually feeds on the blood of any species of mammals or birds and Rotundus is the genus. In fact the Common Vampire Bats are the only species under its genus.
The following report based on the Desmodus rotundusdiscusses the general habitat if them, as well as discovering different structural, behavioral and physiological adaptations that has evolved to let them survive in these days.
Taxonomy of Common Vampire Bats
Diagram of Common Vampire Bat
Diagram of Common Vampire Bat. Retrieved from http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/mammals/bat/Vbatcoloring.shtml
Diagram of Desmodus rotundus Habitat
Habitat of Common Vampire Bat
The common vampire bat is mainly distributed in the tropical and sub-tropical areas within the south of North America continent and North of the South America Continent in countries such as Mexico, Chile and central Argentina. This species are known for its capability to adapt to many environments hence they can be found to live in hollows, caves, trees and even buildings. It does not have a preferable temperature range to live in, any arid and humid would be adaptable. Similar to other species of bats, the Common Vampire Bat lives in colonies like the Wandering Albatross in a variety of sizes ranging from a hundred up to two thousand.
Being nocturnal animals, the bats sleep in caves, trees and human made structures such as buildin gs and cranes during the daytime. It is in this habitat where they breed and sleep. They tend to choose exposed areas in order to accommodate the large numbers in each colony. Like most species of bats such as the Fruit Bat, the Common Vampire Bats sleep upside down with their own weight causing the foot tendons to automatically grasp hold of the trunk. Another feature that the bats take in consideration when scouting for their habitat is potential food source. The Common Vampire Bats normally roost in caves that may be close to their preys like domesticated farm animals such cows and pigs. As these food sources are normally located on farms and ranches, it makes the area an attainable place for the Vampire Bats to stay. Nonetheless, farmers are known for killing them due to the diseases that the bats may carry such as rabies and other diseases that may affect the crops. Nonetheless caves in tropical dry forests, arid deserts and premontane moist forests is seem to be the most preferable location to roost Vampire bats because being in a larger exposure will allow potential predators to swipe out the colony at once. Eagles, Hawks and other big birds are currently the species’ largest threat.
Temperatures that they live in should be warm and usually do not vary greatly. Scientists in the early days had said that vampire bats could not regulate their body temperature well, so they had to stay in warm areas, but later researches that they were able to regulate their body temperature down to 0°C.
Tropical Forests, habitat of Common Vampire Bat
Structural Adaptations
Strong Triceps
Picture of Common Vampire Bat
One of the physical elements that allow the Common Vampire Bat to be so stealthy and a speedy flyer is their strong triceps muscles and their extremely long thumbs. Scientists had tested that the vampire bat’s jumping motion (the motion to be prepared to fly) only takes about 30 milliseconds. Their triceps muscles are so strong compared to their size, that it allows the bat to throw itself about 4 feet into the air. A scientist named Altenbach commented the impressive ‘taking off’ ability of the vampire bat has “although a few other species of bats move readily on the ground and some take off from the ground, no other species possess the extreme terrestrial agility and jumping ability of Desmodus (common vampire bat)”. When they had jumped into mid air, they just need to flap their wings to fly which is basically one fluid motion. This adaptation is definitely beneficial and provides an extreme advantage because their ‘food’ is located at the ground level, having this adaptation could let them escape faster. The environment pressure that may have caused this adaptation is that its easier to prey on potential food source which all accommodate to the terrestrial habitat and the large variety of potential threat and predators.
Vampire's Teeth
Sharp teeths of Common Vampire Bat
The Common Vampire Bats use many physical components to achieve their feeding process. Many people may have misunderstood that vampire bats ‘sucks’ blood from its prey. It is a wrong concept. What they are actually doing, is that they make a small cut or incision and ‘licks’ the blood off. They have fewer teeth compared to other bat species because they don’t have the need to chew to excess food like the fruit bats. The Common Vampire Bat have very sensitive nose, their noseleaf is like a heat sensor that locates areas of the prey which is rich in capillaries. It uses their modified canines for fur clipping and helps to penetrate through the prey’s thick skin and the sharp incisors for opening a cut or incision painlessly; and anticoagulants (compounds in their saliva) to slow down the clotting process which leads to an extended time of bleeding. The environment pressure that may lead to this adaptation is that the needs for the animal to penetrate through the tough external skin of its prey also recently scientist has found that the liquid on the teeth has a positive effect to cure human sickness such as stroke.
Behavioral Adaptations
Sharing is Caring
Colony of Common Vampire Bat
The Common Vampire Bats normally have a buddy system, with pairs of bats forming tight blood sharing relationships. This occurs when two different individuals return favors to meet their mutual benefit. This process of returning favors continuously is called Reciprocal Altruism. Blood is the only dependable food source available for the Vampire Bats hence it doesn't get their share of blood on a regular basis, their body function will fail and will be unable to maintain a critical body temperature. A Vampire bat will starve to death after 60 bloodless hours which is translate to losing as much as 25% of their body weight. Thus when bets fail to feed themselves they could be fed by other bats. By successfully achieving Reciprocal Altruism, both bats may benefit and scientists have proven that the favor is usually returned. Although, the Common Vampire Bat is listed as a 'least concern' under the conservation status, Reciprocal Altruism can help to feed a lot of starving bats and exhibits unity between the colonies. The environment pressure that may have caused this adaptation is the decline of certain potential prey population and the sudden increase of the Vampire Bat population hence not enough food to share around.
Sleeping Upside Down
Common Vampire Bat sleeping upside down
When people talk about bats, a stereotypical image arises in most people’s mind of bats hanging upside down on a trunk or inside a cave. This behaviour certainly occurs to the Common Vampire Bat. There have been proven biological characteristics of bats that allow them to sleep in this specific posture. Firstly, bats cannot take flight themselves from the ground, because their wings are not as developed, making it impossible to create a strong lift from their wings to start a flight. Secondly, hanging upside down allows them to have an ideal ‘set-flight ’position and allows them to automatically launch flight when they let go of their grip. Furthermore, by hanging upside down is a method the bats employ to hide from their predators. The Common Vampire Bats have uniquely formed claws/ palms that allows them to hang in that position without using any energy also while hanging they are actually conserving energy for future activities. The environment pressure is increasing potential threat and predators out in the wild and employing this natural behaviour can both conserve energy and hide from predators at the same time.
Physiological Adaptation
Getting plasma out of their body
As mentioned before, the common vampire bat only relies of blood as their diet. However, they only need the red blood cells from the blood, or small amounts of white blood cells, but plasma do not benefit it and even do harm to their body function. How do they remove the unnecessary plasma from the prey’s blood in their stomach? They have a specialised digestive system and lining of the stomach would absorb the plasma immediately when the blood enters the stomach, then to the kidney through the circulatory system and at last goes to the bladder and then excreted. This process is extremely fast, it happens while the bat is feeding itself. Advantage of this adaptation is to let the bat to consume as much blood as possible at once in order to fill the bat with blood so that the useless plasma would not waste the capacity of the bat to consume precious blood. The environment pressure is that Bats do not have the chance to feed themselves too often because of the constant threat of being killed. The method employed to remove the plasma can reserve more space to be filled with its diet then conserved and used efficiently in the future.
Common Vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) are very ordinary looking compared with other bats. However, they can only rely on blood as their only food source. Its length is only approximately seven cm in length but has a 20 cm wing span and a full grown adult weighs around 28- 30 grams. The Common Vampire Bat’s body is covered with grizzled brown fur with the most significant characteristics being its large black wings embedded with finger bones and six sharp fore- incisors.
The bionomial name of the Common Vampire Bat is Desmodus rotundus. Desmodus means any various tropical American bats in the family which usually feeds on the blood of any species of mammals or birds and Rotundus is the genus. In fact the Common Vampire Bats are the only species under its genus.
The following report based on the Desmodus rotundus discusses the general habitat if them, as well as discovering different structural, behavioral and physiological adaptations that has evolved to let them survive in these days.
Taxonomy of Common Vampire Bats
Diagram of Common Vampire Bat
Diagram of Desmodus rotundus Habitat
The common vampire bat is mainly distributed in the tropical and sub-tropical areas within the south of North America continent and North of the South America Continent in countries such as Mexico, Chile and central Argentina. This species are known for its capability to adapt to many environments hence they can be found to live in hollows, caves, trees and even buildings. It does not have a preferable temperature range to live in, any arid and humid would be adaptable. Similar to other species of bats, the Common Vampire Bat lives in colonies like the Wandering Albatross in a variety of sizes ranging from a hundred up to two thousand.
Being nocturnal animals, the bats sleep in caves, trees and human made structures such as buildin gs and cranes during the daytime. It is in this habitat where they breed and sleep. They tend to choose exposed areas in order to accommodate the large numbers in each colony. Like most species of bats such as the Fruit Bat, the Common Vampire Bats sleep upside down with their own weight causing the foot tendons to automatically grasp hold of the trunk.
Another feature that the bats take in consideration when scouting for their habitat is potential food source. The Common Vampire Bats normally roost in caves that may be close to their preys like domesticated farm animals such cows and pigs. As these food sources are normally located on farms and ranches, it makes the area an attainable place for the Vampire Bats to stay. Nonetheless, farmers are known for killing them due to the diseases that the bats may carry such as rabies and other diseases that may affect the crops. Nonetheless caves in tropical dry forests, arid deserts and premontane moist forests is seem to be the most preferable location to roost Vampire bats because being in a larger exposure will allow potential predators to swipe out the colony at once. Eagles, Hawks and other big birds are currently the species’ largest threat.
Temperatures that they live in should be warm and usually do not vary greatly. Scientists in the early days had said that vampire bats could not regulate their body temperature well, so they had to stay in warm areas, but later researches that they were able to regulate their body temperature down to 0°C.
Structural Adaptations
Strong Triceps
One of the physical elements that allow the Common Vampire Bat to be so stealthy and a speedy flyer is their strong triceps muscles and their extremely long thumbs. Scientists had tested that the vampire bat’s jumping motion (the motion to be prepared to fly) only takes about 30 milliseconds. Their triceps muscles are so strong compared to their size, that it allows the bat to throw itself about 4 feet into the air. A scientist named Altenbach commented the impressive ‘taking off’ ability of the vampire bat has “although a few other species of bats move readily on the ground and some take off from the ground, no other species possess the extreme terrestrial agility and jumping ability of Desmodus (common vampire bat)”. When they had jumped into mid air, they just need to flap their wings to fly which is basically one fluid motion. This adaptation is definitely beneficial and provides an extreme advantage because their ‘food’ is located at the ground level, having this adaptation could let them escape faster. The environment pressure that may have caused this adaptation is that its easier to prey on potential food source which all accommodate to the terrestrial habitat and the large variety of potential threat and predators.
Vampire's Teeth
The Common Vampire Bats use many physical components to achieve their feeding process. Many people may have misunderstood that vampire bats ‘sucks’ blood from its prey. It is a wrong concept. What they are actually doing, is that they make a small cut or incision and ‘licks’ the blood off. They have fewer teeth compared to other bat species because they don’t have the need to chew to excess food like the fruit bats. The Common Vampire Bat have very sensitive nose, their noseleaf is like a heat sensor that locates areas of the prey which is rich in capillaries. It uses their modified canines for fur clipping and helps to penetrate through the prey’s thick skin and the sharp incisors for opening a cut or incision painlessly; and anticoagulants (compounds in their saliva) to slow down the clotting process which leads to an extended time of bleeding. The environment pressure that may lead to this adaptation is that the needs for the animal to penetrate through the tough external skin of its prey also recently scientist has found that the liquid on the teeth has a positive effect to cure human sickness such as stroke.
Behavioral Adaptations
Sharing is Caring
The Common Vampire Bats normally have a buddy system, with pairs of bats forming tight blood sharing relationships. This occurs when two different individuals return favors to meet their mutual benefit. This process of returning favors continuously is called Reciprocal Altruism. Blood is the only dependable food source available for the Vampire Bats hence it doesn't get their share of blood on a regular basis, their body function will fail and will be unable to maintain a critical body temperature. A Vampire bat will starve to death after 60 bloodless hours which is translate to losing as much as 25% of their body weight. Thus when bets fail to feed themselves they could be fed by other bats. By successfully achieving Reciprocal Altruism, both bats may benefit and scientists have proven that the favor is usually returned. Although, the Common Vampire Bat is listed as a 'least concern' under the conservation status, Reciprocal Altruism can help to feed a lot of starving bats and exhibits unity between the colonies. The environment pressure that may have caused this adaptation is the decline of certain potential prey population and the sudden increase of the Vampire Bat population hence not enough food to share around.
Sleeping Upside Down
When people talk about bats, a stereotypical image arises in most people’s mind of bats hanging upside down on a trunk or inside a cave. This behaviour certainly occurs to the Common Vampire Bat. There have been proven biological characteristics of bats that allow them to sleep in this specific posture. Firstly, bats cannot take flight themselves from the ground, because their wings are not as developed, making it impossible to create a strong lift from their wings to start a flight. Secondly, hanging upside down allows them to have an ideal ‘set-flight ’position and allows them to automatically launch flight when they let go of their grip. Furthermore, by hanging upside down is a method the bats employ to hide from their predators. The Common Vampire Bats have uniquely formed claws/ palms that allows them to hang in that position without using any energy also while hanging they are actually conserving energy for future activities. The environment pressure is increasing potential threat and predators out in the wild and employing this natural behaviour can both conserve energy and hide from predators at the same time.
Physiological Adaptation
Getting plasma out of their body
As mentioned before, the common vampire bat only relies of blood as their diet. However, they only need the red blood cells from the blood, or small amounts of white blood cells, but plasma do not benefit it and even do harm to their body function. How do they remove the unnecessary plasma from the prey’s blood in their stomach? They have a specialised digestive system and lining of the stomach would absorb the plasma immediately when the blood enters the stomach, then to the kidney through the circulatory system and at last goes to the bladder and then excreted. This process is extremely fast, it happens while the bat is feeding itself. Advantage of this adaptation is to let the bat to consume as much blood as possible at once in order to fill the bat with blood so that the useless plasma would not waste the capacity of the bat to consume precious blood. The environment pressure is that Bats do not have the chance to feed themselves too often because of the constant threat of being killed. The method employed to remove the plasma can reserve more space to be filled with its diet then conserved and used efficiently in the future.Bibliography
Enchanted Learning Search. (2010). Vampire Bats. Retrieved July 21st, 2010, from http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/mammals/bat/Vbatcoloring.shtmlBay Science. (2010). Desmodus Rotundus. Retrieved July 21st, 2010, from
http://bayscience.org/Animals/D/Desmodus_rotundus/
Angle Fire. (2010). The biogeography of Vampire Bat. Retrieved July 21st, 2010, from http://www.angelfire.com/realm/shades/demons/bats/vampirebats.htm
The Centre for the Conservation of Speialized Species. (2010). The Common Vampire Bat. Retrieved July 21st, 2010 from http://www.conservationcentre.org/scase7.html
Wikipedia. (2010). Vampire Bat. Retrieved July 21st, 2010, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_bat